Multitasking: News Watching & Domain Investing

I was watching the news last night and there was a story about New York City offering nicotine patches to people trying to quit their smoking habit. Instead of calling them “nicotine patches,” the news anchor referred to them as “tobacco patches.” I hadn’t heard that reference before, but I thought that if a person with a teleprompter in front of him made this error, there are probably others out there who might do the same thing.

I quickly did a Whois search for TobaccoPatch.com and saw that the name was registered in 1998, although the domain name doesn’t resolve. I searched for TobaccoPatches.com, and voila, it was unregistered! I snatched it up and will park it to see if anyone is making the same mistake as the television anchor. Just a few clicks a year, and the name will pay for itself. I know a name like this is certainly a gamble, but I would rather take my chances on this than on creating a random word that doesn’t exist.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

5 COMMENTS

  1. Hello Helliot,

    I am AGREE with you about the interest to hear the news to register new names. But register errors of no popular phrases: NO.

    For the type of “garbage” you registered here, there is no need to hear the news.
    You can get all the combination of terms composed by 1, 2, 3, 4 words indexed by Google and ranked by term frequency.
    The name you registered was aleady listed here with millions having better metrics.
    If the guy in the radio made the mistake, it has already be done by others, so the data is aleady here.
    (That’s the data domain tasters are using)

    Above I call “garbage”:
    Generic domain names based in phrase having no search popularity and very low term frequency.
    (You probably know that “search type in” volume is mainly a percentage of the above metrics)

    Except you decide to play the volume versus the quality, and “industrialize” the registration process (like Frank) there is no interest to register such names.
    Register the name, update the DNS,… takes you +5 mn of your time.
    And these five minutes of your time worth more than $5 I guess.
    So the name registered quickly need to make +$1.00 monthly to not be a loss.
    This is far to be the case with domains based on such metrics.

    A domainer will NEVER be rich manually registering a dozen of such names daily.

    ***UPDATED BY ELLIOT***

    Francois,
    I guess you are better at this business than I. Sometimes its about having fun and taking chances. If I lose out, it’s $7.44 down the drain. It will be more entertaining to watch than playing $50/hand blackjack at the Tropicana where I could lose 7x more in much less time.

  2. I disagree that with Francois that news terms are garbage. Even related news terms (tobacco versus nicotine). He refers to these as “error” terms, but they are not typos, just new terms. And yes, you can do a generic search for combination 2-4 word popular terms based on their search rank, but that does nothing in regard to the trend factor. I think the news is a great way to pick up new domains. Yes, the terms may have been used before, but news is what drives interest to them currently. Only time will tell whether the term will last or not.

    Interestingly, I had just written up a blog this morning (link below) in regard to your article on trendy domain names (a la TMZ.com). A news event that I pointed out was the whole recent subprime financial problems. I think this situation will be talked about for years to come and these terms will remain or perhaps even grow in popularity as they are secured into our language as what caused our next recession.

    http://www.greentaxi.com/?p=221

  3. I try these types of domains out at tasting.dotcomgenie.com. If it gets no traffic in the tasting period, I drop it. The tasting fee is just pennies. If I feel the name has good resale or development potential, however, I’ll keep it, even if it fails the taste test.

  4. Francois….

    Sometimes listening to the news, reading (almost anything)
    can inspire you to Storyboard for names. Walt Disney developed Storyboarding in the 50’s. This can get your mind
    thinking which names and such might just make a mark. Possibly the name(s) might be the best for ” giving “. I recently gave away 13 names to a non-profit agency. They took the names,developed the sight and it will help guide Hundreds and Hundreds of Truck Drivers all over America with
    issues of divorce, money, health, direction, spirituality, family, and host of others. They could do more with these names than I ever could. They had the desire and direction
    to make it happen. This site is continuing to be endorsed
    by the largest of trucking companies in this country!

    Francois, Check it out. ” DRIVERSWELLNESS.com ”

    Now, what if Eliott and his family decide to give this Tobacco name away… Free….and it helps Hundreds and Hundreds of people. Not only America, France too !!
    Hmmmmm, maybe that’s a waste of watching the news.

    I just think not all is DOLLARS and SENSE.
    Thanks, Eliott for lettin me speak.
    ( If this is too pointed, don’t print it. )

    Ed – in cold Michigan tonight!

  5. Not a bad idea Elliot. Along the same line, since you’ve got the focus on “patch/patches,” try different disease names and try to predict other potential types of patches, like arthritispatch.com (this one was already taken). Seems, over the past several years, new types of patches have been introduced for different types of ailments, since patches are just a different and more publicly-accepted method for drug delivery. It may also make sense to try alternate words for “patch/patches,” like pill/pills and capsule/capsules.

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